1. Field of the Invention
The field of the invention is that of printers, peripheral printers for central control units, such as printers incorporated into printing apparatuses, such as fax machines.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Two types of printer are mainly known: printers with laser printing and printers with thermal printing. The field of the invention is that of the latter printers. Printers with thermal printing, provided with a head of resistive heating elements, use, as the printing medium, either thermal paper, on a roll, or ordinary paper in the form of sheets.
The field of the invention is, even more particularly, that of printers with thermal printing using sheets of ordinary paper, that is to say printers with heat transfer printing. Printing takes place, under the action of the printing head, by transfer of an ink which melts on heating and is deposited beforehand on a support film, the whole forming a printing ribbon. The invention relates to these inking printing ribbons which have, consequently, a width at least equal to that of the sheets intended to be printed.
The precise positioning of these very thin ribbons in a printer involves manipulation weighed down with precautions if it is desired not to waste length, while still correctly tensioning the ribbons.
It has already been proposed to use, in a printer, an intermediate and removable cradle arranged to receive a ribbon pay-out roll and a ribbon take-up roll, by the clipping-in of their spindles, the positioning or loading of the rolls on the cradle being performed quite easily after having removed the cradle from the printer and before repositioning it therein. However, such a solution, with a removable cradle, can only be suitable for printers of relatively large size.